Henriette Fürth

Siegmund Katzenstein came from a family with strong priestly roots, but wore his religion more lightly, tending towards religious liberalism.

[6] A few years later Henriette Katzenstein, still aged just nineteen, married a distant cousin, Wilhelm Fürth.

Encouraged by her brother, in 1890 she began to publish articles of "social criticism", and over time was able to contribute usefully to the household budget from her talks and written pieces.

[7] As early as 1896, she distanced herself from the formidable Clara Zetkin when she rejected the ideal of a separation between the "bourgeois" and "proletarian" women's movements.

However, as her husband's leather wholesaling business declined and then, in 1901, went bankrupt she had to go out to work, first as a housing inspector and later as a paid secretary with the "Israelitische Hilfsverein".

From 1901 till 1907 she was also a regular contributor to the publication's special "Women's Movement" ("Frauenbewegung") section, reporting on developments both domestically and abroad.

Influenced by contemporary discussion of Neo-Malthisianism she had long stressed the importance of social policy measures for the improvement of public health.

Now, in addition to the rational application of modern methods of contraception and advocacy of pre-marital health-certificates "in very precisely defined and limited circumstances", she was suggesting sterilisation in the case of inherited serious illness.

[2][10][11] In 1905 Fürth became a founding member of the Berlin group for the Deutscher Bund für Mutterschutz (loosely, "Association for Mothers' Protection").

[12] She was a member of the "Deutsches Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten" ("... for combatting sexually transmitted diseases").

[14] Military defeat was followed by a wave of revolutions in the German ports and cities, widespread economic destitution and a new republican constitution whereby all citizens were eligible for public office, without discrimination, based on their abilities.

[2] On the city council she was a member of the Finance Committee and also held positions of responsibility in respect of the schools service, health and nutrition.

Antisemitism, till now little more politically than the basis for shrill offensive sloganising, quickly became a core underpinning of government strategy.

[3] She had been widowed the previous year, and now moved to Bad Ems where she lived quietly in the house of her son-in-law, the district rabbi Friedrich Laupheimer (1890-1965).